Moving image. To be seen on TV, in a museum, in a cinema. On an iphone.
Festival director Bero Beyer found it difficult to choose eight films to nominate for the Hivos Tiger Award. After all, what makes a film special? According to Beyer, Elisabeth Subrin's film drama A Woman, a Part evokes a sense of nostalgia and is also outspoken, bold and above all human. The #IFFR check by Culture Press is that A Woman, a...
With the revamped, more compact Tiger competition, IFFR aims to show what the festival stands for. Nurturing new talent with a voice of its own. Is the Tiger roaring again?
Can a robot understand our feelings? Can we know others. Japanese drama Sayonara and American stop-motion animation Anomalisa have an unexpected common ground.
Who does a film belong to? That's the theme at this year's IFFR Critics' Choice programme. From YouTube compilations to a Russian Mad Men. Is the studio the owner, the filmmaker or the viewer? With video essays as the new form of film criticism.
Rivette was one of 'gang of seven' in the 1960s, the brash bad boys who changed French cinema forever with their Nouvelle Vague. He died on 29 January of Alzheimer's.
The Rotterdam Tiger Competition selected films by newcomers with a distinctive voice of their own. History's Future by Fiona Tan is a philosophical essay bursting with imagination.
Every stage show, film, or concert has a scene that touches you. A moment that evokes emotion, amazement, or perhaps disgust. Even in director Sam Mendes' James Bond film Spectre, there is such a moment that stays with you. It concerns the excerpt in which classical music, namely the aria Cum dederit from Antonio Vivaldi's Nisi Dominus RV 608,...
45th Film Festival Rotterdam, the first under new director Bero Beyer, gets off to a strong start with Beyond Sleep, after W.F. Hermans's Nooit meer slapen.
"Let's have a Magna Carta of British Broadcasting." With those words, celebrated actor Idris Elba (Luther, The Wire) began his closing remarks in the British Parliament. For the past half hour, he has been speaking to the Lords and Ladies kindly yet persuasively about the need and opportunities for diversity in British television. The timing of this speech was perfect because...
Ettore Scola, one of the greats of Italian cinema, died in Rome on Tuesday. His films, full of warmth, sharp humour and human and political commitment were always a treat.
Movies that Matter is organising a screening of Mohsen Makhmalbaf's 'The President' on 10 January with special guest -writer and journalist- Alexander Münninghoff (The Stamholder). In 'The President', a deposed dictator in an Eastern European country is confronted with his actions after he is forced to go into hiding with his grandson. In Mohsen Makhmalbaf's satire, the roles are briefly reversed and with it...
Time for our success list. In 2015, we attracted 60,000 more visitors than in 2014. That's something to be proud of. A website that focuses on the stories that existing media find the small, and then figures like that. That we attracted those 300,000 visitors is one, that they spent an average of 2 and a half minutes per story,...
Three completely different titles were favourites of the Dutch film press in 2015. Holocaust drama Son of Saul was the winner.
After a tumultuous period, the Filmhuis Alkmaar is finally getting a new home in a surprising location. Under one roof with the new theatres of JT cinemas. On Wednesday 16 December, the agreement between JT and Filmhuis was signed in the complex under construction.
As the new Star Wars is about to hit cinemas, we look back to 1977. How did the phenomenon take off and what did people think of it?
Whole generations of children have grown up with Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy and their friends. The universe in which adults are conspicuous by their absence, but children's emotions are remarkably complex. And that is probably also the appeal of the television cartoon A Charlie Brown Christmas, which first aired exactly 50 years ago. Charlie Brown has no sense at all of...
A young Afghan who dreams of a career as a rapper turns out to be the ideal protagonist for an appealing documentary. Sonita is winner of the IDFA audience award.
With one day to go, it's time to look at what stood out about the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam. The picture of the whole festival is diffuse, as befits a fest whose programme booklet is almost three hundred pages thick. There was, as always, a sea of films about abuses and current political issues, but there were...
It doesn't often happen to me that just under 30 years after seeing a film, I still remember in what state I left the theatre. Supreme confusion it was. Was all this real? As a filmmaker, were you allowed to hit your interviewees? Was it staged? It was too horrifying to imagine everything really happening
A Strange Love Affair With Ego by Ester Gould was awarded best Dutch documentary at IDFA. An intimate and groundbreaking reflection on our need to be seen.
American filmmaker Les Blank stole my heart a long time ago with the short docu he made about Werner Herzog: Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. And that is exactly what happened in that film. Herzog lost a bet to Errol Morris: he never thought the latter would finish his Gates of Heaven. And so...
Today's IDFA viewing tip is directly opposite yesterday's. Yesterday was uplifting and heartwarming. Cartel Land, on the other hand, is hard, raw, unpleasant and brutal. It could hardly be otherwise, as Matthew Heineman's film is about the war on drugs in Mexico and Arizona, which is just north of it. At the risk of...
Today's IDFA viewing tip is the kind of film I normally stay away from: a feel-good film that is stylistically neat, but nowhere innovative. And yet I went flat and with me the whole audience. Why? For the same reason that a group of men with tablas and sitar gets the Jazz at Lincoln Center flat. The combination of western...
Today, the appeal against the conviction of Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov to 20 years in prison is due to be heard. European Film Academy appeals for help from director Nikita Makhalkov.
Today's IDFA viewing tip is for a special film about a special man, Sun Mu. That's not his real name, it means 'without borders'. And that is very appropriate for this artist. For years, he was a successful propaganda artist for the regime in North Korea. Until he ventured the great crossing. He swam (literally!) to freedom and has been living since the...
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